Your office likely already has the bin in the kitchen for cans and glass and near the photocopier and fax machine for recycling paper. That’s a great start…but it’s only the beginning of what’s possible. What does your office do with plastics, food waste and technotrash like CDs, PCs and cell phones?

Whether we’re at home, the office, school or in between, decreasing waste (food, energy and trash) needs be top of mind wherever we go…and however we get there. That’s the only way we’re going to reach our destination of bettering the planet.

MAKE magazine brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the exciting projects in your life and helps you make the most of technology at home and away from home. Projects in the magazine range from old-school balsa wood and tissue-paper airplanes to what to do to keep aging high-tech gadgets alive to building autonomous robots from junk.

In this post, MAKE contributor Tiffany Threadgould shares how to make planters from plastic containers.

The sun generates more energy than necessary for life on Earth, yet only a fraction of that is utilized for solar power. In this video from Dark Rye, we explore harnessing its mighty power. In Arizona an innovative company makes thin-film photovoltaic modules affordable and recyclable, while an engineer in Hawai'i addresses the challenge of storage.